Warwick Jones, Assistant Secretary of the Public Service Association (PSA) says staff are disappointed to hear the DHBs are saying there isn’t a workload problem.

"We’re happy to go back to bargaining but considering Auckland District Health Boards won’t accept staff are overworked, or that we’ve raised the issue, really goes to the heart of why staff are taking our message to the public," he says.

The union first raised workload issues in 2010 when the Government started their $1.7billion health cuts, he says.

"Hospital staff are already overloaded and a new plan to stretch them across seven day services when we aren’t even funded for five will drive staff to exhaustion," he says. "To rub salt in the wounds, the DHBs wants to thank new staff for going the extra mile by paying them less."

Counties Manukau DHB staff will strike on Thursday 12 from 8-10am. The main protest will be outside Middlemore Hospital on Hospital Road, Papatoetoe.

Please note the District Health Boards are referring to the Safe Staffing Healthy Workplace (SSHW) project. The SSHW has only just started working on a tool to measure and identify workloads and the utilisation of staff for the occupations on strike. It will take at least two years to develop this tool and even then won’t provide additional staffing or funding and therefore won’t fundamentally resolve workload problems.